The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for assessing a quality of a headlight of a motor vehicle.
The following discussion of related art is provided to assist the reader in understanding the advantages of the invention, and is not to be construed as an admission that this related art is prior art to this invention.
When assessing the quality of headlight, certain criteria such as uniform light distribution, tendency to flicker, and stability of the light-dark boundary of the headlight have to be evaluated. Normally, such an evaluation can not be implemented in a static state because vibration, introduced for example by the engine and chassis into the headlight, significantly impacts the afore-mentioned factors. For example, when xenon headlamps are involved, resonant oscillations may be encountered in the light arc as a result of vibrations, causing unwanted flickering.
Evaluation is therefore typically executed while the motor vehicle is traveling, with vibratory excitation being oftentimes enhanced by running on a vibration track. The actual assessment is provided qualitatively by the driver or an observer standing outside the motor vehicle. This approach does not provide quantifiable data about the headlight quality so that a comparison between different types of headlights or of the quality of the same headlight in different motor vehicles is hardly possible.
It would therefore be desirable and advantageous to provide an improved method and apparatus for assessing a quality of a headlight of a motor vehicle to obviate prior art shortcomings.